Exposing Atheistic Myths

[skepticalbip]

...but that's NOT the anecdote.

Bayes' Theorem
Background information.
What are the chances he will pick the widget closets to the top - easiest to reach.

And the odds are 1 in 40 of the defective widget being the easiest to reach... just as the odds are 1 in 40 of it being the hardest to reach, or in any of the other specific positions.

That's a different anecdote. (Whether the wigdets are arranged at random.)
IF they are arranged randomly and IF the blindfolded co-worker selects one completely at random,
THEN all have an equal chance of being selected first.

You must surely understand how easy it would be to rig the scenario such that the defective widget will almost certainly be picked 1st. And that's the reason why you have to avoid mocking your religious co-worker"s belief telling them it's only ever 1 in 40

WTF are you claiming? If it is rigged then there is a 100% chance of picking it on the first selection. If it is fair then the odds will be 1 in 40 of picking it first.

It seem that you now realize what the real odds are but are incapable of a simple, "Oh, I see. My mistake." Honesty is always best - to continue with evasion only makes you look like you are incapable of reason. It is better to be perceived as someone who will admit to a 'brain fart' than as someone incapable of reason.

 

[Lion IRC]

No.
I don't 'secretly' agree with you.
Piss off.

 

[DBT]

Not really. Only a maximally great, omniscient, omnipotent Being could continuously improve on their own handiwork.

A hypothetical statement of regret by God doesn't imply that God has exhausted the limit of His abilities - which are infinite.

Improving over time and practice implies not fully knowing in the first place, which in turn eliminates an Omniscient God.

 

[Lion IRC]

God can make a good, better or best chocolate cake.

He doesn't have to always make the best cake every time. In fact to describe Him making the best cake He possibly could would be to limit His infinite baking skills.

This is totally irrelevant. The premise is not that some god wants to bake a cake and doesn't care how good a cake it is.

I agree that's NOT the premise and I don't claim that God doesn't care how good the cake is.

The premise involves 3 traits that Christians typically are unwilling to cede about their imaginary friend:

[*]This imaginary friend is maximally benevolent: Its benevolence is such that no greater benevolence could possibly be achieved.

...by any other being. This is an important distinction. God is not in competition with Himself.

Maximal greatness is not a compulsory imposition upon God to always act at some imagined level of maximal greatness.

It simply affirms/asserts that no other being can ever equal His maximal greatness.

Suppose God bakes a maximally - unimaginably - great cake, unequalled in history and prior to which nobody could ever imagine anything better. Then someone comes along and by pure luck happens to bake a cake which even God Himself says is better than His previous cake.

By the doctrine of maximal greatness, all God has to do is set His mind - His divine prerogative intention - to the task of making an even better one.

Let's call this imaginary friend "God."

If God knows that suffering exists anywhere in the universe and cannot keep it from happening, God could be more powerful. A more powerful God could eliminate all suffering.

Sure. And the fact that suffering exists simultaneously with the existence of an All Powerful, All Wise, All Loving God, means that it must have a beneficial purpose.

If God knows that suffering exists anywhere in the universe and chooses not to keep it from happening, God could be more benevolent.

Well there's no "if" to God's knowing that suffering exists if the existence of suffering has some necessary purpose to further the maximal good.

If anything else is of a higher priority to this God than eliminating suffering than there is a way that this God could be more benevolent and less whatever it is that is keeping it from being maximally benevolent.

I don't accept that God has to prioritise His will(s).
If/since God can have anything He wills whenever He wills it, it doesn't make sense to speak of God denying Himself priority "A" while He waits for priority "B" to eventuate.
(See Ecclesiastes Chapter 3)

If God is unaware of the vast amount of suffering that exists in the universe then god could be more knowledgeable. Calling such a God Omniscient is a misnomer.

God is equally aware of suffering and bliss and the ratio in which these exist.
He surely knows what would happen if suddenly nobody on earth had any idea what suffering was.

No solution to this problem has ever been put forth that does not in some way attenuate the maximal nature of either Benevolence, Power or Knowledge. It is impossible to resolve this problem, which is why it has persisted inviolate for thousands of years.

I don't consider it a "problem"

 

[Lion IRC]

Not really. Only a maximally great, omniscient, omnipotent Being could continuously improve on their own handiwork.

A hypothetical statement of regret by God doesn't imply that God has exhausted the limit of His abilities - which are infinite.

Improving over time and practice implies not fully knowing in the first place, which in turn eliminates an Omniscient God.

No. It's the other way around.
If God could NOT do something new and improved then you might say He was not omnipotent.

But to meet the definition of MGB all He has to do is bake a better cake than any other being can.

 

[steve_bank]

I feel like I am naked on the street when my atheist myths are exposed.

 

[DBT]

Not really. Only a maximally great, omniscient, omnipotent Being could continuously improve on their own handiwork.

A hypothetical statement of regret by God doesn't imply that God has exhausted the limit of His abilities - which are infinite.

Improving over time and practice implies not fully knowing in the first place, which in turn eliminates an Omniscient God.

No. It's the other way around.
If God could NOT do something new and improved then you might say He was not omnipotent.

But to meet the definition of MGB all He has to do is bake a better cake than any other being can.

I was referring to omniscience, which by definition means perfect and absolute knowledge of all things knowable. Omnipotence acts upon perfect knowledge of all things knowable without the need to practice and perfect what was always known. Practice implies imperfect understanding.

 

[Jarhyn]

In this thread, I will be exposing common atheistic myths. Anyone want to try to stump me?

Sure. Say one true thing about atheists.

Intellectually lazy.

Ah yes, "lazy". Is that what you call the people who claw and fight for every piece of knowledge that they have, as a product of experimentation, study, and work, who spend decades reading the utter mountains of work by those who came before, and doubting it as diligently as they can so as to weed out the inaccurate bits.

As opposed to those diligent folks who source all they claim can be known from a single set of books that they refuse to even retranslate.

Sure.

 

[Lion IRC]

No. It's the other way around.
If God could NOT do something new and improved then you might say He was not omnipotent.

But to meet the definition of MGB all He has to do is bake a better cake than any other being can.

I was referring to omniscience, which by definition means perfect and absolute knowledge of all things knowable. Omnipotence acts upon perfect knowledge of all things knowable without the need to practice and perfect what was always known. Practice implies imperfect understanding.

I hold that omniscience is a subset of omnipotence.
The ability of God to know whatever He wants whenever He wants - not the compulsion to know all things at all times.

 

[steve_bank]

No. It's the other way around.
If God could NOT do something new and improved then you might say He was not omnipotent.

But to meet the definition of MGB all He has to do is bake a better cake than any other being can.

I was referring to omniscience, which by definition means perfect and absolute knowledge of all things knowable. Omnipotence acts upon perfect knowledge of all things knowable without the need to practice and perfect what was always known. Practice implies imperfect understanding.

I hold that omniscience is a subset of omnipotence.
The ability of God to know whatever He wants whenever He wants - not the compulsion to know all things at all times.

It must be ab awesome feeling to know the will of an all powerful god. It is isn't it? The feeling of being an emissary of a god. Like a character in a fantasy adventure movie. Doing battle with the nonbelievers. Doing battle with evil spirits.

Like Lord Of The Rings.

Listened to part of the 50 Club today. Talked about a woman who is battling evil commands sent to her mind by evil spirits.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Listened to part of the 50 Club today. Talked about a woman who is battling evil commands sent to her mind by evil spirits.

Was that Paula? Sounds like Paula.
Hope she wins. She's the only one with a password for the travel claim software.

 

[DBT]

No. It's the other way around.
If God could NOT do something new and improved then you might say He was not omnipotent.

But to meet the definition of MGB all He has to do is bake a better cake than any other being can.

I was referring to omniscience, which by definition means perfect and absolute knowledge of all things knowable. Omnipotence acts upon perfect knowledge of all things knowable without the need to practice and perfect what was always known. Practice implies imperfect understanding.

I hold that omniscience is a subset of omnipotence.
The ability of God to know whatever He wants whenever He wants - not the compulsion to know all things at all times.

Does that mean that God deliberately chooses ignorance?

Deliberately creating a flawed world in order to practice getting it right....getting it right being something that could have been done the first time had ignorance not been chosen?

 

[bilby]

Not really. Only a maximally great, omniscient, omnipotent Being could continuously improve on their own handiwork.

A hypothetical statement of regret by God doesn't imply that God has exhausted the limit of His abilities

That's true, as long as his abilities are finite.

- which are infinite.

Oh.

Shit.

I guess your ability to grasp infinity is a weak as your ability to grasp basic probability.

 

[bilby]

But that's NOT the anecdote.
There is not an equal chance that the widget at the bottom of the stack and the one at the top of the stack will be picked first.

Their placement is random. So that doesn't affect the probability that the defective one is in the chosen position.

 

[bilby]

Nobody is denying that if 40 objects are placed in a circle and you blindfold someone in the center of the circle, spin them around three times and then ask them to point in any direction THEN there is an equal 1 in 40 chance that they might pick the defective one first.

Nobody cares. You are fundamentally, mathematically, and completely wrong on this question.

 

[bilby]

...but that's NOT the anecdote.

Bayes' Theorem
Background information.
What are the chances he will pick the widget closets to the top - easiest to reach.

And the odds are 1 in 40 of the defective widget being the easiest to reach... just as the odds are 1 in 40 of it being the hardest to reach, or in any of the other specific positions.

That's a different anecdote. (Whether the wigdets are arranged at random.)
IF they are arranged randomly and IF the blindfolded co-worker selects one completely at random,
THEN all have an equal chance of being selected first.

You and Treedbear must surely understand how easy it would be to rig the scenario such that the defective widget will almost certainly be picked 1st. And that's the reason why you have to avoid mocking your religious co-worker"s belief telling them it's only ever 1 in 40

Sure, it could be rigged.

But if it is, the odds are better than 40:1, and if it's not, they're exactly 40:1. In no scenario are the odds worse than 40:1, as you have been claiming.

 

[Lion IRC]

I'm not claiming that they are worse than 1 in 40.
Obviously, there are no more than 40 picks before you've exhausted alll options.
But that's not the anecdote.
The co-worker isn't doing a blind random pick of one out of 40.
They are picking the one closest at hand. Hence the widgets closest at hand have a better chance of being picked.
AND we have no background information stating that the 40 widgets are randomly arranged.
So it's not a simple 1 in 40 chance.

If God wanted to send a miraculous sign to the co-worker by way of letting them pick the defective widget 1st go, then He could place the defective one at the top of the stack and closest within reach.

Finding the defective widget 1st pick or last pick are not equally probable if you know additional background information.

 

[Atheos]

This is inane. Unless there is "background information" that indicates any particular order in which the widgets are arranged they are to all intents and purposes random. Therefore any one selected, no matter what selection criteria is used, has exactly a 1 in 40 chance of being the defective one.

If you have a standard deck of cards and do not have any information about what order they are in, the odds that the one on top is the Ace of Spades is exactly 1 in 52. It's the same principle. It doesn't matter how many times you shuffle the deck, cut the cards, etc., once you set the deck on the table and overturn the top card the odds are always going to be 1 in 52 that it's the Ace of Spades. There are certainly millions of upon millions of different arrangements the cards can be in at that point but the odds that the one on top is the Ace of Spades is still 1 in 52. Period.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Does that mean that God deliberately chooses ignorance?

Deus Ex Machina refers to that part of a play where the writer is faced with a time limit and a huge amount of plot complications to resolve for the happy ending. One or another god descends from the rafters, waves his or her hands, and the story is resolved. Because gods can do that sort of shit.

Not dissimilar to 'proof is left to the student,' where the proof of a math theorem is possible, but such a ball-busting bitch that the author doesn't feel like writing it, much less making sure it gets through the typesetters without a fault, and just waves a hand. Trust me, or do your own work, you faggots, alright? Alright. Next theorem.

Perhaps another term might be Deus Ex Stragulum De Yankum? At the opportune moment, pull the rug out from under a superpowerful character's feet? The character is just too powerful, so the plot requires some change. Thor is off planet during Civil War; Hulk refuses to hulk-out and fight Thanos; God's omnipotence or omniscience or omnipresence is not OMNI but has necessary limitations to keep from overresolving a plot complication in a rational matter; The Watcher sees all, but is sworn not to interfere.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sure, science says the universe an earth are old. Does this mean they are right? Of course not. For example, when God made Adam and Eve, they looked about 25 years old but they were 0 seconds old. If a scientist came along to study Adam and Even, he would conclude that they have been around for 25 years, not 0 seconds.

God created the woman well after he created the man, so their ages wouldn't have been the same (0 seconds).